


After

by Alley_Skywalker



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Aimeric Lives, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Politics, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 12:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16618766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/pseuds/Alley_Skywalker
Summary: Jord and Aimeric try to make a life together after Laurent's ascension to the throne. Aimeric feels like he has lost almost everything and Jord fears what will happen if he is presented with a chance to attempt to recapture his old life.





	After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [desastrista](https://archiveofourown.org/users/desastrista/gifts).



> Written for the Fandom Trumps Hate Auction.  
> I'm sorry this took forever! There are like 10 discarded drafts of this scattered around my computer. It kept changing what it wanted to be xD

There were times, at first, when Jord wondered if Aimeric’s despondence was complete and irretrievable. 

He never talked about any of it. Not with Jord, at least. 

He had not been there for his father’s execution. He had chosen to not go to his eldest brother’s. He never wrote to his second eldest brother, who had been barred from inheritance and exiled. 

(A fate suffered by a dozen or so heirs. They went abroad together to start what new life they could. Jord speculated that that was how vengeance quests started and foreign enemies were bread. He knew better than to make comment of it.) 

Aimeric had no relationship with his eldest sister – “married to a neutral party—small victory that,” someone had commented once in Jord’s presence – and seemed too embarrassed to face the youngest. 

(Jord saw the youngest, Georgiana, once at market before leaving the capital. She’d stared at him for a minute flat before bursting into tears and running off, too quick for Jord to call her back. “I think she misses you,” he had told Aimeric and gotten no response.) 

Aimeric’s youngest older brother had had little involvement in anything political or military. There was nothing credible to punish him for and Damianos counseled so. In the end, Laurent left Pierre alone, though he would inherit no lands. Lyose, for her testimony, had gotten a life estate in all the family’s property. After her death, all land would go to the state, though Pierre would inherit all personal property and liquid assets. Naturally, Lyose, Georgiana and Pierre set to stripping the estate of all the value they could get out of it and hiding, investing, and otherwise re-allocating the monies. Everything that did not go oversees, at least, to help Arnaud. 

Pierre wrote sometimes and Jord thought Aimeric answered. But he never asked. 

*

Jord had petitioned on Aimeric’s behalf. Him and Lyose, who had done so for all her children. None of Aimeric’s childhood friends, what few he had left, were in a position to do so – Southern family tended to oppose Laurent on principal, whatever they ended up thinking of the late Regent. Jord was certain that Damianos had had something to say on the subject, too. 

The verdict was a death of a sort to Aimeric. Not to mention the humiliation of being at Laurent’s mercy. And in the end, after all that: stripped of inheritance rights, stripped of nobility, exiled from the capital and from the Southern districts. 

(“Why not let him go home?” A cold look in response. “If anyone reaches for a coup, it will be the Southern lords. Why would I let him anywhere near them?”) 

Jord had tendered his resignation. Aimeric had sneered that he should not, not on his behalf. And Jord had laughed bitterly and said that it was not. He no longer wished to serve in the royal guards—Prince’s, King’s, it made no difference. 

This was and wasn’t true. 

Laurent was many good things and many awful ones. But he was not the only thing that either held Jord in service or pushed him away. His duty to Auguste’s memory had been fulfilled. He never wished to be embroiled in another civil war again. 

How he and Aimeric ever made peace, he could not say. Jord’s stubbornness and Aimeric’s lack of recourse, probably played a role. 

*

Aimeric considered it a not-so-small victory that they had found him when he had already lost too much blood to be conscious and spent long enough on the verge of death afterward for Laurent to develop a course of action that did not involve torturing information out of him. 

He considered it a devastating defeat that they found him at all. 

*

Jord had inherited a hunting lodge from his father. It had never been particularly profitable work, but it gave him and Aimeric somewhere to live. And AImeric, like many noble-born boys, was good at hunting. Recreational hunting, mind, but they made it up with what Jord could earn taking gigs as part of security escorts and similar enterprises, for the local nobility or wealthy merchants. 

Aimeric, for want of something better to do, attempted to give lessons either in languages or in swordsmanship, but teaching the children of nobles turned out to be too awkward of a position. The constant embarrassment and humiliation of it was overwhelming and Aimeric stuck to hunting and growing herbs for their household needs at first. He then applied himself at a local achieves, helping with sorting and managing their documents and databases, designing comprehensive systems of indexing and doing some accounting on the side. 

They liked him there. Aimeric seemed to have a natural talent for those sorts of things and the excellent education of a noble-born helped. No many with the requisite educational levels wished to travel so far north and for the unimpressive pay the provincial achieve could offer. Besides, Aimeric had the kind of contacts provincial archivists did not have. He was able to bring in some impressive new exhibits and sources by simply writing to old friends. It seemed that at least some of those friendships and connections had survived Vere’s tacit civil war and Aimeric’s disgrace. 

The pay of course, was not brilliant. But it was still relatively good for their circumstances. Aimeric had something with which to take up his time and people who appreciated his skillset. 

Their life was stable, if routine. They were not uncomfortable. 

If only, Jord fantasied, they could be happy. 

*

About a year after they began their new domestic bliss – or what they could make of it – Aimeric’s brother Pierre came up for a _visit._ He brought friends. 

They came in a small group, unannounced, as far as Jord could tell, all on horseback with very little luggage They seemed to be on the movie and their chattiness with Aimeric seemed to conceal a more serious, ulterior motive. They were all sons of Southern Lords but Jord would not have considered any of them important enough to be on anyone’s mind at court. 

The world wasn’t the same as it used to be, however, and Jord was too acutely aware that this far north, there was always a delay in getting fresh news from the rest of Vere. 

There were five of them in total. Two of them, Cade and Antoine, were Aimeric’s childhood friends. The other two were unknown to Jord but Aimeric seemed to at least know who they were. It appeared to Jord that Aimeric struggled with both relief and anticipation. It must have made him happy, Jord mused, to finally be in the sort of company he was used to. Aimeric invited the lot of them to dinner but lamented, with some self-deprecation, that they would not be able to put them all up. 

“It’s best,” the good-looking young Lord Claude of Parsalles, who appeared to be the ring-leader, said with an aloof and affected sort of gesture that immediately reminded Jord of the sort of mannerisms one picked up at court. “We should not stay. Don’t take offense, but it is best if there is little talk.” 

They were not quite prepared for a group of this size and dinner was not nearly what Aimeric would have preferred to serve to his friends from _Before._ Yet, no one made any comment on it, and the conversation was initially light and replete with anecdotes. Pierre and Antoine made efforts to engage Jord in their conversation out of curtesy or strategy – Jord could not really tell – but the rest of the group mostly made merry with Aimeric and Lord Claude was clearly searching for as many points of commonality between them as he could. _Building rapport,_ Jord thought, with mounting suspicion. 

He could tell that Aimeric was not blinded by the comradery, and when the conversation finally turned to politics, Aimeric’s demeaner shifted just slightly, as if he had let out a breath he had been holding. 

“Well, this Union of the Kingdoms nonsense is still going forward, as soon as the King can figure out at least a fraction of the logistics.” Claude commented, almost out of nowhere, just as it was time for dessert. 

“The King? Which one?” Cade asked in gest, causing a round of giggles to circle the table. 

Claude’s expression darkened. “Let us hope we never need to _actually_ ask that. For now, I mean ours.” 

“They would have done it already, if the harvest had not been so mediocre.” 

“And I don’t think Akielos wants to unite with us anymore than we want to unite with them.”

“Wouldn’t uniting be for the best, in the end?” Jord said, surprising even himself. He had not meant to get involved. “Perhaps we would stop fighting each other, finally.” 

They all turned to look at him and Jord suddenly felt the stupidity of what he had just said. These were Southerners, after all. 

Aimeric hid behind his wineglass. Antoine said mildly, “You would not say such things, sir, if you had buried the number of family members and friends killed by Akielons as we have.” 

Jord bit his tongue in order to not say more. What did he know of politics anyway? 

“All I keep hearing about is this unification,” Aimeric interjected. “Has this government done anything but – quite literally – fuck around?”

Claude smirked. “No.”

“That’s not true,” Pierre put in. “They’ve had time for all sorts of lustrations, show trials and ludicrous tax reforms that penalizes the Southern nobility. Ostensibly, they had negotiated an advantageous trade treaty with Patras and increased various protections for pets – who knows why that was a priority – but otherwise, it’s all been court politics. Not like there’s a rush, I suppose.” 

“The picture is pretty bleak. This government cares little for this country and mostly for its own pet projects. No pun intended.” 

Aimeric snorted. “Unsurprising.”

Jord found himself biting the inside of his cheek. He and Aimeric never talked politics. He was clearly outnumbered here when it came to his trust in Laurent to not only be a competent monarch but to also care about Vere. If for any reason, then to honor his brother’s memory. 

“But what is to be done?” Aimeric shrugged. “With any luck, the King will spawn no heirs and—”

“I don’t know if we will survive as a country for that long.”

The room went very quiet. Carefully, Aimeric set down his wineglass. “Options?”

Everything was still. Jord was suddenly aware that some of the young men around the table were glancing at him nervously. Aimeric turned to him and smiled, almost as though in encouragement, but when he spoke it was to the others. “Shall we smoke, gentlemen?”

 _You don’t smoke,_ Jord wanted to say. 

“Coming?” Aimeric asked him as the rest of the group filed out onto the porch. 

Jord shook his head. He couldn’t tell if this was actually a sincere question, or if Aimeric was playing a part. Or perhaps there was an alternative meaning to the invitation. He hated that even after everything, he needed to guess sometimes. 

“Suit yourself.” 

They huddled outside, heads bent together, the long pipes some of them took out mostly forgotten. 

 

The group left some time past midnight, riding off into the dark, melting from sight like they had never been. Jord had dozed off in front of the sitting room fire but woke at the sound of hooves on the gravel. He listened for Aimeric to come back inside, and for a moment had an absurd jolt of panic when the room remained silent. He rose and went to the porch. 

Aimeric stood leaning against the veranda railing, looking out into the darkness. The wind had kicked up and fresh snow – the first that season – powdered the ground. Winter was finally in full swing. 

“What is it that they wanted?” Jord asked, as mildly as he could, coming to stand by Aimeric, but without touching him. 

“How odd it is that they were here. Now they are gone and it is like a hallucination.” A long pause followed in which Jord wondered if Aimeric would not tell him what his friends were planning. “They want a coup. But you probably already knew that.”

Jord let out a long breath. “Does Lord Claude see himself king?” It was difficult to not sound derisive. 

Aimeric scoffed. “No. They want to resurrect the grandeur of the Prouvaire line. Though it would only be through the maternal line.”

“The first Veretian dynasty? Why?”

“The first kings had Southern blood. _Northern maids for Southern kings.”_

“ _And a kingdom made,_ ” Jord replied, almost without thinking, the words of an old folk song, still sung among the common people though out of favor among the nobility for many generations, bubbling up from his childhood. 

“ _Oh those heroes of a daring age. Whose glory shall not fade_.” 

“Do they still sing it in the South?”

Jord could hear the sad smile in Aimeric’s voice more than see it in the dark. “We do, though we pretend not to. I knew it by heart by the time I was six. All twenty versus.”

After another pause, Jord made himself ask, “What did they want of you?”

“There were various proposals. Some better advised than others.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I had enough of politics. They told me to think on it. I told them I would.”

Jord could feel his heart pounding, the dread and the frustration. AImeric had been the only person he had ever considered spending his life with. The only person he had loved _this_ way, and this much. But he could not bear to go through another civil war, to feel torn once again, to be involved in the dirty court games that men who had too much time on their hands played. “Aimeric…” He didn’t know what he could say. “I won’t try to talk you out of doing what you want to do. But I don’t know that I—”

“I won’t do anything you don’t want to do with me.”

Jord froze, unsure of what to make of this declaration. He was staring at Aimeric and trying to understand where this left them. 

“I understand if you don’t believe me…after everything before. But there’s nothing I can do about that. I can only tell you the truth. The truth is that I hope they succeed. I also hope Pierre stays far away from it in case they don’t. I also think…for so long I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself because _myself_ wasn’t worth much. I was patriotic, I learned from my father that politics and power is everything, and like every lad I knew, I venerated Prince Auguste for the leader he was and the king he would be. And then Auguste died and we lost the war and I grew up… I thought the Regent would make a good ruler, if nothing else; that he cared about us as a country, that he appreciated the South. But he was not any of that. And not all the politics and the power in the world saved him or my father. And all the nobility and greatness in the world did not save Prince Auguste. Good people make terrible politicians and good politicians are terrible people in the end. Most are neither. And those who by some miracle are both are doomed.” 

Jord listened, part of him thinking Aimeric was delirious and part of him understanding that this was some garbled version of the confession Aimeric never gave, of the things he never explained. The eternal conflict and heartbreak of trying to replace love and acceptance with dedication and service and finding the replacement hollow. Of wanting to be a part of a whole, only to find all your leaders either dead or a disease. Of loving those who will never return the feeling and learning that love is foremost a tool, while knowing deed down it must be otherwise. 

It was not the Regent he mourned, or an unrequited love for a man who revealed himself to be hideous. It was the death of an entire construct of the world and self, a shattering of purpose, of the entire foundation of his ideals. And Aimeric was nothing if not idealistic. 

“I believe you,” Jord said. 

Aimeric stepped sideways so their shoulders pressed against each other and Jord put an arm around him. “You’re the only thing that makes md happy…with no strings attached,” Aimeric murmured. 

Jord ducked his head and buried his face in Aimeric’s curls. Jord figured that he was perhaps an idealist himself. But he was of low birth and his ideals were more bread-and-salt. He had never had the illusion of trusting too much in those in power or had the luxury to indulge in high-brow and ethereal concepts. He did, however, believe in love. A delusion even the common folk suffered from – sometimes it was the only thing that kept a man warm at night. “I would not blame you if you left, though I would like you to stay. But I don’t think either of us could stand it if you did both.”

He did not need to explain that final paradox. Aimeric understood and the slight tremor of his shoulders indicated one of his cynical laughs which Jord found endearing and irritating in turns. “You’re a fool to love me so.” 

Jord could imagine the delicate arch of Aimeric’s eyebrows and could not help the slow smile that came over him. “Not if I really do make you happy. Not If you stay. Politics and power may be a ruse, but this doesn’t have to.” 

“Even after everything that was?”

“Especially so.” 

Aimeric tilted his head up so that they were looking into each other’s eyes. The snow had covered the yard and the gravel road, reflecting what weak light there was in the world, so that Jord could make out the familiar lines of Aimeric’s face. “ _And side by side the Southern Lords and the daring Northern knights…_ ”

“ _Will fight the good fight through the storm, to seal our hallowed rights._ ”

“ _And the young Prince loves his Northern bride, and marry her he shall._ ”

“ _That love shall forge a peaceful land, from Arles to Ravenel._ ”

And Aimeric’s lips on his were a surrender and a victory— And a promise.


End file.
